"PC stops in boot requiring F1 to continue"

After my hard drive crashed I installed the NT operating system on a replacement, but now I must hit the F1 key to continue booting after the PC recognizes the drives. How can I get the PC to boot up normally, all the way to the windows environment? Do I need to reinstall the operating system, or is there a simpler solution?

This would not be the operating system. This would be your BIOS settings.

Enter your BIOS settings and make sure the Hard Drive is listed properly. Sometthing you did within those settings has changed at the BIOS is letting you know this as a pause type feature and asking for your okay to boot to the hard disk anyway.

Usually there is an error listed along with press f1 key to continue. What does the error say?

Are you running NT 4.0? If not what version are you running. If you are using NT 4, there is an option somewhere in the bios dealing with IRQs that says Plug and Play OS.

Set that to No. To my memory NT 4 is not plug and play compatible, and the bios will need to assign IRQs instead of the operating system. Setting plug and play to no, will tell the bios to assign the IRQs.

You can also try going into the BIOS setup screen and saving changes (even though you don't make any). It could be it's recognizing something different than the previous config, and warns you about it each time until you make the change permanent in the BIOS.

often the bios isn't remembering setting because your cmos battery is low.Try replacing the battery and then start your computer go into the bios detect your harddisk and save the settings, then reboot.

Good try - but you get no cigars from me. In my world with a Pheonix - Award bios, on an MSI board - set the indicator of Halt in the Standards CMOS Features to "NO ERRORS". Save and boot up - Waa Laa! May work on other boards - Good Luck.